Cripple Crow spans the psychadelic rock of ‘Long Haired Child’ to protest song in ‘Heard Somebody Say’ to the poppy ‘I Feel Just Like a Child’ which predictably received the most airplay from the album so far. From being Dylanesque in his ramblings, to wailing Lou Reed style and graceful moaning a la Nick Drake, Banhart fits in well with the New Weird America psych-folk movement, (although quite where this ‘movement’ departs from psych-folk of any other time is rather unclear, making it just more nonsensical record speak) and Cripple Crow is a proper acid trip of an album, surreal and well worth it.

Banhart — whose looks suggest he materialised fully formed at Woodstock to forever remain unchanged — was born in Texas but brought up in Venezuela, and flips gracefully between English and lilting Spanish throughout the album, just as he swings between meditative downtempo and trippy upbeat, and it’s clear from the length of the album this is just the tip of Banhart’s prodigiously creative iceberg.

Although his fourth release was set free mid-last year on XL, Banhart’s Cripple Crow is a folk must-have of 2006.

Devendra Banhart appears at (and curates) All Tomorrow’s Parties, Rye, on 14 May.

For more info:
www.xlrecordings.com/devendrabanhart/
www.cripplecrow.com